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July 3, 2005 If all goes according to plan, American astronauts will have their own ride to space again as of July 13. That is the date that NASA administrator Michael Griffin recently announced for the space shuttle Discovery to make the much-anticipated Return to Space. Liftoff would come nearly two and a half years after Discovery’s older sister, Columbia, disintegrated upon reentry. This isn’t a new role for Discovery, now the oldest and most-traveled of the three surviving orbiters. On September 29, 1988, a five-person crew rode Discovery to orbit on the first manned American flight after the Challenger disaster. But there’s much more riding on Discovery’s success this time around. Prior to the Columbia disaster, Discovery and her siblings, Atlantis and Endeavour, played an integral part in the construction of the International Space Station. They were also the primary method of transporting crews to and from the space station, a role in which the Russian Soyuz capsules have been serving exclusively since that disaster. Columbia, being too heavy to reach the station, had already been relegated to missions devoted to long-duration scientific research and payload deployment. Its last successful mission, STS-109 in March, 2002, was a service call on the Hubble Space Telescope. The orbiters are expected to continue flying until the station has been completed, sometime around 2010, before being retired. The loss of another orbiter, then, would be a huge blow to meeting that deadline. Soyuz spacecraft, though quite reliable despite their 1960s vintage, and the successful Progress supply ships would again be called upon to be the lifeline of reduced crews to the station. Even more important, support for manned spaceflight, having waned again after the Columbia disaster, may disappear altogether, forcing NASA to shelve plans to return to the Moon and visit Mars. The window of opportunity to launch Discovery on the Return to Flight is open from July 13 to July 31. This allows NASA to honor its commitment for the next two shuttle missions to begin in the daytime, during optimum lighting conditions. The hope is that engineers reviewing film from cameras covering the launch will clearly see any potential dangerous debris falling from the large external fuel tank. A chunk of insulation falling from the tank punctured Columbia’s left wing, allowing superheated gas to enter the wing and causing Columbia to break up on its ill-fated reentry. The window of opportunity to convince Americans that NASA should be sending men and women into space isn’t open nearly as wide. Another shuttle tragedy may shut that window for good. ------------ About the author: Claxton Graham has written a number of articles for Useless Knowledge. He works as a business systems analyst. Email: scifiwriter8502@email.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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